I attended the Brand Camp University conference this past Friday at Lawrence Tech University. Last year was the first time I attended a Brand Camp conference, and while the speakers last year were awesome and I learned a ton, I have to say the 2010 conference trumps the 2009 one.
The speakers’ topics and presentations all varied, but these three pieces of advice remained consistent throughout many presentations:
1. Rather than spending time mapping out how to build your personal brand, take action and make great things happen. Your actions = your personal brand.
2. Unless you are a business owner/entrepreneur, then your personal brand should never grow bigger than your commitment to your employer.
3. When done right and at the appropriate times, there’s nothing wrong with self-promotion to build your brand/reputation. But, if you really want people to listen to you and care about what you’re saying, be someone who focuses more on highlighting others than yourself.
In addition to those three nuggets of wisdom, here are some key takeaways from each presentation:
Hajj Flemings, @HajjFlemings
• Think of personal branding as a commitment to lifestyle and the quality of life you want to live.
• Intrapreneur – someone who works in an established organization and paves the path for change.
• Personal branding is a skill that’s becoming more important. Your degree alone won’t separate you from the competition.
• Always make sure your personal brand is portable.
• There’s a genius inside of us and we too often keep it locked up. Genius is your intersection between passion, problem and process.
• Have a mixed strategy of what you own (your domain name) and what you rent (Twitter handle).
Olivier Blanchard, @thebrandbuilder
• A brand is not a set of clothes you take on and off. It’s not a logo. It’s authentic. You can’t fake it.
• Olivier is hesitant to call this personal branding because a brand is rigid.
• It’s difficult to manage a personal brand in an environment like social media that’s always changing.
• The idea of personal brand online didn’t exist until recently. The bigger your brand, the more of a threat you are to a company. You can bring a lot of reach/exposure, but if you say one wrong thing/post one wrong picture, then it’s crisis mode for the company.
• If your company won’t let you express yourself online and is too fearful of your brand/identity, you have to think if that’s the right place to work.
• Being all about “me” and focusing more on your brand than your work is selfish. A real brand is doing your job and doing it well.
• If you go into a company with social equity and continue building it while at your job, you have to discuss what happens when you leave. When Frank Eliason left Comcast, he left all his social equity and had to start all over again.
Peter Shankman, @petershankman
• Your job is to embrace the concept, not the brand.
• When self-promotion is done right, you’re not promoting. You’re helping your audience.
• Social media is brevity. Brevity is knowing how to write. Bad writing is killing America. Bad writing will kill your credibility.
• Social media is not a conversation. It’s engagement. It’s talking to someone and having a response but letting others talk. Have something valuable to say to people online.
• Connect first when you have nothing to promote. Then people will listen when you do self-promote. Make it about them, not you. The best self-promotion in the world is helping others. Then they’ll do the promotion for you.
• Ask yourself before you tweet: “Is it worth it?” “Will it be relevant tomorrow?”
• Don’t say “How may I help you?” online. It’s too generic. Reach out to someone directly who has a need/problem and you can help.
Ari Weinzweig
• An inspiring, strategically sound vision leads to greatness.
• Good book to read – Using the Power of Purpose by Dean Tucker.
• Tap emotional creativity in workplace to eliminate energy crisis in workforce.
• 98 percent of work is drudgery. Can you look past it to see bigger vision? Are you laying stone, or building a cathedral?
• Just be you. When you try to be someone else, no one cares.
• You need to give your customers some really compelling reasons to buy from you.
• “Compelling” means you are excited, motivated and driven to get off your behind and do something.
• People do their best work when they’re part of a really great organization.
Panel Presentation
Moderator: Stephen Clark
Panelists: Mark Winter (@mark_winter), Karen Evans (@karenevanstm), RJ King (@dbusiness)
• What students must possess to succeed: Good communication skills. Respect authority and honor tradition, but make a statement. Need good balance. (Karen). Never stop learning, specialize in a niche. Must be a good writer and communicator. Must have accountability. (RJ)
• The biggest killer of brands is companies that won’t look at origination of problem, but only look at symptom. (Mark) Have your core product/service be really good to have a good brand. If you truthfully provide what you say you are, those who try to damage your image won’t succeed. (Karen)
• Good books: The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey and The Go-Giver, Bob Burg. (Mark)
• Have a plan of who you want to be. Don’t focus so much on what you want to do when you’re first getting out of college. (Karen)
Christopher Barger, @cbarger
• Have a succession plan. If the person who leads social at your business leaves, you need someone who will take over.
• People – get over yourself. You represent the brand; your role is to help close business. Your brand is nothing if you aren’t contributing to your company’s goals, which is mainly selling.
• The day you think you’ve outgrown the brand is the day you stop being effective.
• Once you sign on with a brand, you always represent that brand – even when you’re not talking about it.
• Know the HR/social media policy and follow it, even if you think it’s too restrictive.
• Be careful about crossing the professional and personal streams.
• Be inclusive. Teach others and help raise them up.
• Remember who signs your check. Keep the focus on the brand. The brand is still bigger than you. Use common sense – don’t do something that will tick off HR.
• It’s all about results at the end of the day. Check your ego at the door. Recognize the symbiosis.
Lynne d Johnson, @lynneluvah
• There are so many social media experts. Social media changes too quickly to brand yourself as an expert.
• Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Skittles are examples of brands with social media fails. They didn’t do enough research and think things through enough before initiating a campaign.
• Social media is still new. Building your brand using it is new. You’re going to fail and you’ll learn from those failures. It’s OK to fail.
• Vitamin Water is an example of a brand having success with social media. Used Facebook to create the Flavor Creator, where people created and voted on a new flavor. Results: seven minutes of engagement per app session. Tens of thousands of total votes. 40,000 unique label designers.
• Brands must: be authentic, be transparent, decide what its voice will be online, engage, be more human.
• When there was an earthquake in Chicago, Sarah used social media to share her experience. New York Times and CNN got in touch with her to share her story. Good mention of her business. Results: Five new viable business inquires in four hours.
• Find an opportunity to showcase what you do best. Meet a need in an innovative way. Ask people what they want online, give them what they want.
• Generate a lot of quality content, do it for a good cause, give freely and give often.
• The moment she knew #journchat became a community was when someone broke a rule and she didn’t have to correct them. People from the community did.
• The best time to build a network is when you don’t need one.
Wayne Sutton, @waynesutton
• What he has done with his brand: Participated in the Chevy SXSW road trip, got the opportunity mainly from his online presence. Ford contacted him about doing a 1,000 lap challenge with the Mustang, they tapped Wayne to cover it and blog it. Tweeted photo of Steve Jobs at the Oscars, CNET, All Things Digital, Mashable and others shared his photo and credited his site.
• The most important thing he’s done with his brand is meet great people.
• Your website should be your home base. Use social networks to bring traffic back to your site.
• No one is a social media rock star.
• Using location based services is a great way to build a community.
• Businesses and brands are missing out on the power and potential of location based services.
Cd Vann, @thatwoman_is
• You can have an authentic brand and be transparent, but you can still be irresponsible (example is Al Capone).
• Your peers and followers make your personal brand authentic.
• If you are too honest or transparent when talking about your personal brand, someone may interpret that you won’t value their privacy.
• Cd aims to be translucent instead of transparent. It’s not being dishonest.
• Some people are so open online that they destroy the DNA of their brand.
• She cannot be transparent or else people won’t see a consistent image online and offline.
• How does a brand achieve authenticity (through eyes of consumers, by sharing original stories).
• There’s a time to let people know when you’re having fun online, but you still must be responsible. Think about what you’re putting in black and white.
Thank you to the entire conference planning team (disclosure: I was one small part of the team that made this all happen), the sponsors (thank you Buick for loaning me the Enclave for a few days!), the speakers and the attendees for contributing to a successful conference! I’m told the presentations were recorded, so be on the lookout for those in the next few weeks.
If you attended Brand Camp or watched the live stream, what was your experience? What are some things you learned? Do you think the same/differently about personal branding after the conference? Share your thoughts in the comments!
PS: Brand Camp inspired me to change my Twitter handle to @nikkistephan. It was long overdue. If you followed me at @EstrellaBella10, you’re still following me. Just know that my handle has changed.